But for its latest show, “Heartbreakers,” it’s taken a novel twist — casting TV actors from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s to re-enact headline-making homicides.

The premiere episode (Wednesday at 10 p.m.) stars Christopher Knight (“The Brady Bunch”), Tracey Gold (“Growing Pains”) and Antonio Sabato, Jr. (“General Hospital”) in a love-triangle story set in a small Texas town in the mid-1980s. When junior high school principal Hurley Fontenot (Knight) and football coach Billy Mac Fleming (Sabato, Jr.) fall in love with the same woman — school clerk Laura Nugent (Gold) — the results are deadly.

For the actors, “Heartbreakers” offered the chance to play roles that were different than what they had been offered in the past — as well as a welcome job.

“Lately I play a lot of moms, so it was fun to be in this kind of tawdry situation,” says Gold, who played Carol Seaver on the ’80s ABC sitcom “Growing Pains.”

And Knight — better-known as middle brother Peter Brady on “The Brady Bunch” — says he’s having a ball riffing on his persona.

“It’s so much more fun playing a character and in this business you don’t usually get to play anything other than what you’ve done in the past,” he says. “If you’re a leading man it’s rather restrictive.”

In addition to the re-enactments, episodes will include interviews and behind-the-scenes commentary with actual people involved in the cases, as well as news coverage of the crimes and suspects.

“I thought it would be quite jolting for me to be playing the leading man when the character that they’re going to weave in is going to look nothing like me,” says Knight, who is portraying a Southern man of Creole descent.

“With that I decided to just go for it and to do the accent and do the comb-over and do it as a paunchy 50-year-old. There’s nothing sexy about the character.”

It’s all part of the campiness factor on “Heartbreakers,” which is directed and written in an Aaron Spelling-esque style of prime-time soaps. Kevin Sorbo, Jack Wagner, Judd Nelson, Rob Estes, Nicole Eggert and Jamie Luner are on tap to appear in future episodes.

“Obviously it’s a serious subject, but there is sort of an element to it that’s a nod and a wink,” Gold says. “It’s a little melodramatic; it doesn’t take itself super-seriously.”

That also includes nods to the actors’ more famous credits — like two classic “Brady Bunch” callbacks in the premiere.

“There’s a ‘don’t play ball in the house’ reference and another about ‘pork chops and applesauce,’ which people can’t resist having me be attached to,” Knight says.